Sentimentalizing Racial Reconciliation in the “New South Africa”: Cinematic Representation of the 1995 Rugby World Cup

Abstract

In an age when the obsessive fixations on virtual reality scenarios and digital simulations of historical events have blurred the boundaries between truth and fiction, collective memory—and the authenticity it purports to maintain—come under threat of irrelevance if not outright extinction. As a distinctive kind of storytelling, filmmaking can be a powerful tool for promoting the collective remembrance of the past. Yet film is a notoriously slippery medium where questions of factual accuracy, objectivity, and truthfulness are concerned. Focusing attention on the Hollywood blockbuster film Invictus (2009) enables us to explore how feature films based on true stories produce modes of collective remembrance that have only tangential relationship to actual histories of real events. Directed by Clint Eastwood, and starring Morgan Freeman as President Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar, captain of South Africa's national rugby team, the Springboks, Invictus recounts the story of South Africa's hosting and winning of the 1995 World Rugby Cup, barely a year after the historic liberation elections of April 1994 brought an official end to white minority rule. The surprising, last-minute victory against the heavily favored Australian national team, the All Blacks, was a highly charged emotional moment in the contemporary history of the New South Africa, capturing the hope for racial reconciliation and the optimism that accompanied the rainbow vision of the future. Invictus fosters a distinctive kind of sentimentalized remembrance that requires a selective, partial engagement with the actual politics of the day and a caricatured understanding of race and racism in contemporary South Africa.